The on-going debate in marketing-to-boomer circles has to do with the use of nostalgia. Are boomers endlessly fascinated with our own history? Or are we eager to cut our ties to the past and live fully in the present?
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Bondi Digital Publishing casts its dice with the former camp, banking on boomer fascination with their release of Rolling Stone: The First 40 Years and Playboy: The 50s. Per their press release: “the searchable DVD-ROM box sets from Bondi Digital Publishing bring the past back to life with two of the most popular and venerable publications of our time.”
This press release comes at the exact moment in my life when cleaning out the attic, I had just made the decision to dispense with boxes and boxes of personal journals, old books, and yes, magazines from the era. Not sure what I was saving them for—and to release them, well, I feel light as a feather.
Ironically, one of the magazines that went into the trash bin was a copy of “Rolling Stone”, circa 1970, which ironically included a story written by me. So, given Bondi’s betting on boomers, the past may have a somewhat tougher time being put behind me than I’d envisioned.
Specifically, the story was about radical young Danes occupying empty houses under the Danish version of eminent domain. Radical young Danes and one American college student backpacking through Scandinavia that summer, that is. Hadn’t thought about that adventure for years. And now, I’m part of a boxed set.
Knowing that this article is being preserved for perpetuity, writing for “Rolling Stone” is what I’ve come to think of as one of my personal Forest Gump moments. Another was riding in a car with Abby Hoffman to retrieve the yippy pig from the SPCA at 1968’s Democratic Convention in Chicago. (I was covering the convention as a special youth reporter for “The Chicago Daily News.”) Another was almost getting thrown up on by Janis Joplin curbside of the Fillmore Auditorium.
So, when it comes to nostalgia, I obviously have mixed feelings. It’s not that I need to live with every moment of decades past in my own attic. But it is nice to know that somewhere in the world, a light tap of a computer key can surface a special memory or two.
About Rolling Stone Cover to Cover: The First 40 Years
Bondi Digital Publishing, distributed by Perseus Distribution
$125 U.S./$150 Canada
ISBN-13: 978-0-9795261-0-7
ISBN-10: 0-9795261-0-8
Carol Orsborn